User’s Guide — LinkFixer Advanced

Software Update Notifications (Extremely Important!)

It is critically important that you provide access to both of the following internet sites to every Windows user who will run LinkFixer Advanced:

• https://linktek.com/ —  port 80
• https://s3.amazonaws.com/ — port 443

For more information, please read https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/Resource_Ports.html.

Important Note: Lack of access to either of those sites could prevent you from being notified about critical updates to LinkFixer Advanced. We strongly recommend that you ensure your network does not block access to these sites.

To confirm that these sites are not blocked by your firewall (or are inaccessible for any other reason), choose {☰} | Check for Updates. If there is a problem, you will be notified when you press this button that there was a problem checking for updates.

Hardware and Software Requirements

Operating Systems

Supported operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows 10
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019

Other Software

• Microsoft SQL Server is required for optimal performance. This does not need to be installed on the same computer as LinkFixer Advanced.

• .NET 4.6.1 Framework. This will be installed along with LinkFixer Advanced if not already installed.
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017. This will be installed along with LinkFixer Advanced if not already installed.

Ports

• Ports that must remain open are:

• Port 80 — HTTP
• Port 443 — HTTPS, for Amazon S3
• Port 53 — DNS
• Port 8080 — HTTP
• Port 22 — Support Channel
• Port 123 — NTP
• Port 111 — Amazon Data
• Port 2049 — NFS
• Port 20048 — NFS v3
• Port 139 — SMB v2
• Port 445 — SMB v3

For more information, please read this article: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/Resource_Ports.html.

• Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) IP Address Ranges: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/Welcome.html

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Important Note: The hardware requirements below are minimums. For optimum hardware requirements, please contact LinkTek Support at 727-442-1822 or email Support@LinkTek.com so that we can discuss your specific needs.

• Four processor cores are required as a minimum. Using 16 processor cores on every LinkFixer Advanced computer is strongly recommended for faster processing.
• 16 gigabytes of RAM are required as a minimum. Using 64 gigabytes of RAM is strongly recommended for a greater (faster) experience. (4 CPUs to 16 GB RAM, or 8 CPUs to 32 GB RAM, or 16 CPUs to 64 GB RAM). You should provision CPU cores and RAM in a 1 (CPU core) to 4 (GB RAM) ratio.
• Recommended: 200 gigabytes of available hard disk space. System free space must be at least 150 GB after installing LinkFixer Advanced.
• Multiple computers to share the processing load are also recommended. In many cases, you can distribute LinkFixer Advanced’s workload across multiple computers. This can dramatically increase your processing speed and thus shorten your migration jobs.

File-level Passwords and Encryption

You need to remove any file-level password protection or encryption from your files for LinkFixer Advanced to be able to process them, unless the files are Word or Excel filetypes.

For information on processing password-protected Excel and Word files, please see the dedicated chapter on that subject later in this guide.

File System Permissions

• Full control access to the folder “C:\ProgramData\LinkTek\LinkFixer Advanced\”. Access should include all files and subfolders.
• Full control access to the folder “C:\Users\Public\Desktop\LinkFixer Advanced\”. Access should include all files and subfolders.

Internet Access (License Activation)

• Access to https://secure.softwarekey.com

SharePoint On-Premises Permissions

• Domain user account which must be a Site Collection Administrator and must have read/write access to the Active Directory Domain

SharePoint Online Permissions

• Domain user account which must be a SharePoint Online Site Collection Administrator and must have read/write access to the Active Directory domain
• Access to https://sharepoint.com
• Access to the domain https://microsoftonline.com

Important: Your Windows user account must have read and write access to every network location, server, share, directory, and file that LinkFixer Advanced will be instructed to process.

Database Requirements

The default database installed by LinkFixer Advanced is SQLite, which is suitable for testing and small production jobs up to 100 gigabytes. SQLite is not suitable for processing larger numbers of files and links. SQLite will cause LinkFixer Advanced to process your files far more slowly than with a SQL Server database installation.

All production installations will require that you connect LinkFixer Advanced to a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or newer SQL Server database server. We do not recommend using Microsoft SQL Express. It has limitations that are very likely to result in performance bottlenecks. The evaluation version of SQL Server (which is not provided in the LinkFixer Advanced installation) provides access to all of SQL Server’s features for 180 days.

SQL Server Advantages

There are some very important advantages to using SQL Server (even SQL Server Express) instead of SQLite. These include:

• LinkFixer Advanced will process your files and links faster, both because SQL Server is faster and because using SQL Server allows LinkFixer Advanced to process more files using multiple threads at the same time. Multi-threading will automatically be enabled as soon as you switch from SQLite to SQL Server.
• If your license permits, you will be able to install and run multiple instances of LinkFixer Advanced at the same time and connect these instances to the same LinkFixer Advanced database.

Configuring SQL Server

If you already have SQL Server installed, have your database administrator make a new database specifically for LinkFixer Advanced. LinkFixer Advanced will automatically create the necessary database schema when it first accesses the database. The exact steps to install SQL Server are outside the scope of this guide, but instructions for performing a basic installation using SQL Server’s defaults is available from Microsoft:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/install-sql-server-from-the-installation-wizard-setup?view=sql-server-ver15

Note: LinkFixer Advanced requires the use of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or newer.

Also, the following is important to know regarding the SQL Server database:

1. LinkFixer Advanced requires a blank database that the LinkFixer Advanced user has read/write access to.
2. LinkFixer Advanced requires the default schema to be used for the database.
3. When LinkFixer Advanced creates its schema, it does not use named schemas and expects its schema to be the default (“dbo”). There should not be any conflict with other schemas, as LinkFixer Advanced only uses and requires a single schema for its operation. For more information, see the following article under the section titled “Default Schema”:

​https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd283095%28v=sql.100%29.aspx

Microsoft SQL Server Database Requirements

Our Microsoft SQL Server database minimums are:

• SQL Server database initial size: 500MB or more
• SQL server log initial size: 8MB or more
• Database autogrowth: 250MB or more
• Log autogrowth: 250MB or more
• Windows account must have read/write permissions.
• SQL Server account must have read/write permissions.

SQL Server Database Permissions

The database permissions of the LinkFixer Advanced user should be set to “db_owner”.

Detailed instructions for provisioning and configuring SQL Server are automatically presented in a pop-up screen in LinkFixer Advanced when you select SQL Server as the database provider in the “Options | Database” screen.

Testing the Connection

Be sure you select the database from the box and test that your database connection works.

Where to Install LinkFixer Advanced

Where on your network you install LinkFixer Advanced can have a profound effect on the speed at which LinkFixer Advanced can process your files and links. In general, you should install LinkFixer Advanced as close as possible to both the data you intend to process and as close as possible to your SQL Server database. The images below illustrate the relative speed and efficiency of various network configurations.

LinkFixer Advanced will generally work fastest when it is installed in the same location as your files and your SQL Server.

Processing speeds will always be relatively slow if you install LinkFixer Advanced in your local data center but configure it to process files that are located in a remote data center. This speed reduction is a result of network latency between the data centers.

We strongly recommend that you avoid installing LinkFixer Advanced at a distance from your SQL Server. LinkFixer Advanced communicates even more frequently with the SQL Server database than it does with your files. So, any network latency introduced between LinkFixer Advanced and the database will have even more of a negative effect on speed than distance between LinkFixer Advanced and your data set.

The worst-case scenario would be if you install LinkFixer Advanced in a location that is remote from both the SQL Server database and your data.

Notice also that running only one instance of LinkFixer Advanced will always be slower than running multiple instances with each instance pointed to a different segment of your data.

Administrator privileges are required for installation.

You must have Administrator privileges to install LinkFixer Advanced on your computer. If you do not have Administrator privileges, you will need to get an Administrator to install LinkFixer Advanced for you. We also strongly recommend that LinkFixer Advanced be operated only by a user with Administrator privileges, as LinkFixer Advanced requires “read-write” access to any files it will be processing.